230477 Adapting King Lear After the Millennium (S) (SoSe 2020)

This seminar sets out to explore the ways in which King Lear serves as a major signifier of bare life, of forced migration, of living in a state of exception in the context of contemporary socio-political and cultural setups.
As a central canonical text, King Lear boasts a long list of adaptations beginning in the 20th century with peaks in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and a mass of new adaptation on stage and screen after the millennium. Focusing on the 2018 TV-adaptation by Richard Eyre starring Anthony Hopkins as Lear, the performance-to-screen adaptations by Trevor Nunn (starring Ian McKellen, 2008) and Michael Buffong (starring Don Warrington, 2016) and Kristian Levring’s The King Is Alive (2000), we will consider the adaptational surrogations of bare life in different cultural contexts in order to shed light on the ways in which Shakespeare’s play is employed to reflect on current demarcations of the human.

Literaturangaben

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. R.A. Foakes. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 1997.
King Lear. Dir. Michael Buffong, Bridget Caldwell. Wr. William Shakespeare. Spirit Entertainment, 2016.
King Lear. Dir. Richard Eyre. Wr. Richard Eyre. Amazon Prime, 2018.
King Lear. Dir. Trevor Nunn. Wr. William Shakespeare. Metrodome Distribution, 2008.
The King Is Alive. Dir. Kristian Levring. Wr. Kristian Levring, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nordisk FIlm Distribution, 2000.